Siobhan, November 30th, 2011
You might recall that a few weeks ago on this blog I talked about the exciting charity event that our Mando Foundation team were putting on, to raise money in support of Countess of Chester appeal Relative Comfort. November has gone by in a bit of a blur, and I can report that all the totals from the evening are now in, and the evening was a huge success.
Over 70 guests showed up to Leaf Tea Shop & Bar on Bold Street to participate, mingle, and just generally have a good time. Entertainment in the form of our very own Matt Stephens as MC and music from excellent local covers band Duke gave the evening a great atmosphere, while support from local businesses such as Hope Street Hotel and the Everyman & Playhouse encouraged real generosity in people entering the raffle, hoping for a chance to win some awesome prizes.
All this of course was an aside to the real fun, the awesome Scalextric tournament which everyone turned up for. The 8-lane Scalextric track was brilliant – bells, 
whistles, and really cool glowing lights – and dominated the room, and the pre-tournament free-for-all really ramped up excitement for the main event. A number of our clients, friends, and local businesses kindly sponsored a car for the evening, were given the opportunity to brand it however they saw fit – my personal favourite was the glitzy, bedazzled Glitterbug from Liverpool Science Park – and nominated a driving team to lead them to glory or (in some cases) despair in our miniature Grand Prix.
In the end, River Professional Services’ designated driver demonstrated an impressive aptitude for speeding around the track and led to them scooping the 1st prize of a bottle of bubbly and a rather impressive trophy. The had close competition all evening in the form of local architecture firm Falconer Chester, who followed them to second place, while our Gemma’s determined driving gave third spot on the podium to Mando Group!
There was of course a design competition held to acknowledge the effort put in by those who branded their car – it turns out that apparently not everyone’s tastes runs to diamantes like mine does, as the prize for best dressed automobile went to Curly Productions’ Batmobile-inspired creation, which was a demon on the track despite narrowly missing out on a podium spot.
Ultimately, the generosity of everyone involved helped to raise just shy of £3500 for the Relative Comfort appeal, pushing them past their £300,000 target just in time for the 31st December deadline.
Janet Ratcliffe, Fundraising Manager for the Relative Comfort appeal, said: “It was a brilliant evening– a fundraising event with a difference where everybody could participate and have fun. Sadly I didn’t back the winning car but nevertheless it was thoroughly enjoyable and the icing on the cake was to find out later what a fantastic amount had been raised for our appeal”
1 comment Filed under: Awesomeness, Charity
Siobhan, November 3rd, 2011
The month formerly known as November has closed in on us quickly this year, and the Mando men are once again exercising their Gentleman’s right to grow upper lip facial hair in exotic and decorative styles. This year’s ManMo team are brazenly disregarding loved ones’ objections, friends’ advice, and colleagues’ horror in the pursuit of fame and fortune in the world of luscious lip caterpillars.
As always, it’s all in a good cause under the Movember banner, supporting mens prostate cancer charities and generating awareness of mens health.
Please donate generously if you can, as again this year Mando Group have pledged to match whatever the team raise pound for pound. You can either donate to the team, or to individuals. Donations can be made via the website http://mobro.co/ManMo or see any of the team members individually to donate via cash.
Team Captain:
Matt Stephens
Team members:
Adam Clifford
Andrew Laidman
Matt Guthrie
Matt Salmon
Stephen Roughley
Tim Myers
Henrik Stacke
Tom Riley
Check back here throughout Movember for updates as to how their luxurious lip warmers are coming along!
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Siobhan, November 1st, 2011
Earlier this year, we ran several ‘We Make SharePoint Beautiful’ events, small gatherings for like-minded IT professionals who were interested in hearing what we had to say about Microsoft’s SharePoint 2010 Technology platform.
Well, we’re going to be running the series of events again across the North West into early 2012. As before, we’ll be painting a picture of what SharePoint 2010 can achieve as a public facing web platform when it’s combined with the right User Experience-led approach. To whet your appetite, a little bit more information about what SharePoint can do can be found over at our dedicated showcase wwww.WeMakeSharePointBeautiful.com
Our next event is on 23rd November 2011 at Malmaison in Manchester, featuring the Mando Team alongside some key guests from Business Link, Microsoft, and the world’s leading hosting company, Rackspace.
If you’re interested in attending, or for more info about any of our upcoming events, please contact Amalie.
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Siobhan, October 12th, 2011
Here at Mando Group, we believe that one of the most important aspects of our ethos is our commitment to supporting the local community and offering aid to worthy causes through our charitable enterprise, the Mando Group Foundation.
Working in partnership with the Community Foundation for Merseyside, the Foundation enables our staff & clients to offer their time and energy to helping those who need it.
To this end, we’re hosting a charity fundraising event on 10th November.
The event, ‘Motor Mayhem’, hopes to encourage participation from our friends & clients by appealing to their inner-child with its Scalextric theme.
For a charitable donation, participating clients will be presented with a plain Scalextric car chassis – a blank slate for their company to design & decorate in any way they see fit, before pitting their incredible electric car racing skills against others.
In addition to the nostalgia-fuelled main event, the evening will include live music and a charity auction with some great prizes. All proceeds from the evening will go to Mando Group’s Adopted Charity for 2011, Relative Comfort, which is an appeal set up by the Countess of Chester to create a ‘home from home’ environment for relatives of patients who are in the critical care unit. The Foundation adopts a charity on an annual basis and encourages individuals at the company to put forward charities which are close to their hearts.
We’re supporting Relative Comfort this year because we think that what they’re trying to do is something that more critical care units need to think about – support not only for patients, but their relatives, because everyone could need this support at some point in their life.
Our aim with this event was to come up with something that was a little bit different, that would have universal appeal – and we thought that the Scalextric theme was a great way of exciting people who maybe wouldn’t ordinarily consider attending an event like this. Hopefully, it’s the first of many more exciting events from the Mando Group Foundation.
So please – throw down the scalextric gauntlet, relive a bit of your childhood, and help support a great cause – join us for some Motor Mayhem!
Contact Amalie for more information or to enquire about purchasing a ticket, and read more about the Mando Group Foundation’s activities here.
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Siobhan, September 22nd, 2011
United Utilities, the UK’s largest listed water company, has transformed the way in which its customers can interact with them following the launch of a new self-service web portal, branded My Account.
The portal enables United Utilities’ customers to review current and historic payments, set up and amend direct debits, switch to paperless billing, provide meter readings, and notify the company if they are moving house.
The customer self-serve was developed by United Utilities’ digital partner Mando Group in collaboration with systems integrator Infosys and was soft launched in mid-May. It has already proved very popular with registrations to the service exceeding 30,000, and around 15,000 customers have made the move to paperless billing in the same period. In developing the portal, project leaders at Mando Group concentrated on making My Account a simple to use fully featured service without compromising customer confidentiality and security. Mando Group account director for United Utilities Jonathan Seal said that My Account was already proving popular with customers for this reason. “Consumers want to be able to engage with the utilities providers that help them get on with their lives. Moving this relationship online, and putting the customer in control is therefore very attractive for all concerned. We took a consumer-led approach to designing the user experience that’s at the heart of My Account, and we believe that it’s now an exemplar of how utilities can offer a fully featured self-service portal.”
United Utilities also worked with advertising and design partner One Marketing Communications to develop the launch strategy and creative execution which is currently running across radio, press and online, as well as key customer touch points. One’s Client Services Director Tristan Morris said “We wanted to ensure that the creative work reflected both the end benefits to the consumer and the simple, clean and easy to use service to maximise uptake across their wide customer demographic. We worked closely with United Utilities’ marketing team and Mando Group to maximise integration opportunities and the results so far are testament to this.”
United Utilities’ Online Communications Co-ordinator Caroline Smith said that My Account underlined the water company’s commitment to enhancing customer service while also contributing to cutting costs to serve. “One of the best ways that we can achieve sustainable improvements in customer service quality is to put our customers in charge of managing their relationship with us. My Account does this very well, and we are confident that as we communicate its advantages we will see more customers use the service.”
United Utilities is the UK’s largest listed water company, serving over seven million customers in 3.2 million households across North West England. United Utilities customers can register for My Account here
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Siobhan, September 15th, 2011
In recent months, we’ve been working with hearing-aid specialist Amplifon in order to develop their new online presence.
The new site, which launched in June, represents a refreshing new feel while remaining on-brand and reflecting Amplifon’s position as the world leader in their field.
The website provides visitors to the site with easy-to-use functionality, allowing them to easily locate what they are looking for and includes user-friendly features such as a branch locator for the company’s 200+ hearing care centres nationwide and the facility to request a free hearing test online.
Mando Group built the site using the Umbraco content management system, which allows Amplifon to benefit from much greater flexibility and control over their content and changes a previously static site into a fluid and dynamic digital offering.
We’ve also been working closely with Amplifon in providing design input to support advertising campaigns both online and television based.
Mike Copley, Online Manager at Amplifon, said:
We are really delighted with the new website – it looks great and gives visitors all the information they want about hearing loss and how we can help, as well as allowing people to book a hearing test online. There’s also an excellent branch locator so you can find which of our 200 hearing care centres is near you.
The site is helping us drive our business forward and since the new site was launched we’ve seen a considerable increase in site traffic.
See the site in action at www.amplifon.co.uk
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Siobhan, July 21st, 2011
While most of us are stuck here in the office today, Amalie, Ryan and Adam C have been having a whale of a time over in the lakes.
They’re there as a part of the Mando Group foundation’s initiative to develop a Leadership Academy with North Liverpool Academy, acting as mentors to some of the NLA’s students in their Leadership Bootcamp.
The students – along with the lucky Mando Group volunteers – have spent the day participating in outdoor pursuits activities to help develop their leadership skills and GEM attributes, with a view to them leading a Small Action: Big Change Project in September 2011.
More about the activities of the Mando Group foundation can be found on our Foundation page.
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Siobhan, June 7th, 2011
Back in April Mando Group oversaw the successful launch of a new Liverpool-based user group for Microsoft .Net developers in the North West area. The Stack, held at Parr St. Studios in Liverpool, attracted upward of 30 guests who enjoyed talks on security within Windows Azure from Mark Teasdale and on the MVVM pattern in Microsoft Silverlight applications from Mando Group’s own Jon Rimmer.
After a high turnout and positive feedback, The Stack is now set to become a regular feature, with a second event being held on Wednesday 6th July. Topics at the event will include a discussion on “Declarative Refactoring in C#” with Telerik Evangelist and Microsoft MVP Chris Eargle, as well as a talk on “MbUnit – the framework time forgot”.
In addition to the great talks lined up, there’ll also be some excellent giveaways, including various software licenses and a Microsoft Kinect.
The Stack is a free to attend, developer-to-developer group, aimed at providing an opportunity for users of the .NET platform and other Microsoft web technologies to meet up, have a chat with like-minded individuals, and listen to different speakers discussing their own areas of expertise.
The second event has already generated a lot of interest, and there are now only a limited number of spaces still available. If you’re interested, book your place through Eventbrite.com, or get in touch with us via thestack@mandogroup.com or on twitter @thestackug.
No comments yet Filed under: Awesomeness, Creative, Social, Technology
Siobhan, March 23rd, 2011
Friday 18th March rolled around last week, and it wasn’t quite your average Friday. Here in the UK it happened to be the day of Red Nose Day, Comic Relief’s biennial fundraising extravaganza. This year Red Nose Day managed to raise a whopping £74million for Comic Relief.
Over at Mando Group, we’re never ones to miss out o
n a good cause party, so several of our staff members bravely dressed up in ridiculous outfits and went on a fun run through Liverpool city centre, on what turned out to be one of the warmest days of the year so far!
They returned panting and gasping and bearing bucketsful of hard earned cash for Comic Relief – to the tune of over £500. Well done to all of them!
And the efforts of those of us in the office who are happier living a more sedentary life shouldn’t be forgotten – the Mando Group Comic Relief Cake Sale was a sight to behold, with cakes as far as the eye could see. One brave soul determinedly sampled one portion of everything there was to offer, to much applause and stomach ache.
The Mando Group Foundation’s generous offer to match what we raised only spurred on our efforts, and we’re all really thrilled with the response we received. All in we managed to raise over £1,500 for a fantastic cause, and we hope everyone else had as great a day as we did!
http://www.justgiving.com/MandoComicRelief
1 comment Filed under: Awesomeness, Charity, Creative
Siobhan, February 15th, 2011
With the continued success of our previous two SharePoint events in Liverpool and Manchester, we’re moving a bit further afield with our next event. It’s in Leeds on 7th April 2011, at the Malmaison Hotel from 12 noon to 2:45pm, with a great informal lunch provided for attendees.
The events showcase SharePoint 2010′s great abilities as a public facing web platform when combined with the right user-experience led approach.
Once again we’ve got a great bunch of business leaders attending to demonstrate their real-world examples of SharePoint in action, as well as the Mando team. If you’re interested in joining us, please RSVP to siobhan.ohare@mandogroup.com to reserve your place.
For more information please check out our SharePoint showcase @ www.wemakesharepointbeautiful.com
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